Kino's Journey

Together with their sentient motorcycle Hermes, Kino is a traveller who journeys from country to country, staying in each country for three days to experience what it has to offer. On their latest stop, Kino and Hermes find themselves in a country that seems to be inhabited only by servile machines. Is Kino the only person in the entire country, or will they be able to track down the humans and discover their story?

Towards the end of winter, Kino comes across three starving men who are trapped in the snow. Deciding to save them forces Kino to choose their lives over the lives of the three rabbits she must hunt for their food. Will the men prove worthy of the choice and obligation Kino has made -- and will they in turn respect the implicit obligation they have to Kino?

People are always looking for meaning, adding depth to even the most abstract of writings and actions and turning them into rituals and traditions. As Kino travels from country to country, they encounter the traditions of many different lands, starting with a land whose Book of Prophecy claims that the end of the world is only one day away. This episode consists of four different stories.

Kino was not always a traveler, nor were they always named Kino. As a child, they grew up in the Land of Adults, a place where adulthood and responsibility is attained by the means a single operation carried out on every child's twelfth birthday. As an eleven year old girl, Kino fully expected to undergo the operation and become an adult, until a mysterious traveller visited her country and opened her eyes to other possibilities...

As they make their way along an old railroad, Kino runs into a man who has been polishing the tracks for some fifty years. Stopping for a break, Kino entertains the man with a story of a land where the people no longer have to work, but choose to subject themselves to meaningless and stressful tasks anyway. It may seem foolish to the old man, but little does he realise that his own work is just as pointless, for, as Kino is about to discover, there are two more men working on the railroad, each undoing the work done by the others.

When Kino stops off in a country reputed to be a beautiful and wondrous place, they find that the reality is far different from their expectations. Thanks to the laws laid down by the land's cruel and hedonistic king, all visitors must participate in battle tournaments or be subjected to lives of slavery as second-class citizens. Forced to abide by this custom, Kino takes gun in hand and enters the coliseum, but how will they fare in the life-or-death battles against a variety of opponents who are each driven to fight by their own, unique motives?